Devonian Times

Tuesday tip: Clip and search with PopClip

eboehnisch — Tue, 21 May 2013 08:00:59 +0000

PopClip is a marvelous little app that gives you an iOS-style contextual menu for selected text with the usual options: Copy, Cut, Paste, etc. But beyond what is available out of the box it can be easily extended. Install the DEVONthink Pro (Office) PopClip extension from our Download Extras and Manuals page and clip selected text to your inbox or search your databases for the text with just one click.

Macworld.com reviews DEVONagent Pro 3.5

eboehnisch — Fri, 17 May 2013 06:50:06 +0000

Yesterday Macworld published a four-mice review of DEVONagent Pro 3.5, written by Joe Kissell. You already know Joe as the author of many excellent Take Control books, among them also Take Control of Getting Started with DEVONthink 2 and Take Control of Your Paperless Office.

Joe compares version 3.5 with version 2.3, which he had reviewed back in 2008, and draws the following conclusion:

For serious, detailed Web research, especially when you have to find data that’s not accessible in conventional search engines, DevonAgent Pro can cut through clutter and help you make sense of complex information. It’s unlikely to replace Safari, Chrome, or Firefox as your everyday browser, but for what it does best, no other tool can compare.

Read the full review here.

Presenting at the HdM Stuttgart

eboehnisch — Wed, 15 May 2013 19:26:14 +0000

Today I had the honor to give a 45-minute presentation at my former college, the Stuttgart Media University (Hochschule der Medien, HdM), on my zig-zag career path, our products from DEVONthink to DEVONsphere, and about how to build an Internet startup. It was a lot of fun being back in the hallowed halls again and meet some fantastic customers who use our apps intensively for their research and educational work.

Good bye, Hardy

eboehnisch — Tue, 14 May 2013 05:59:57 +0000

An old friend of mine and fellow software developer, Hardy Macia from Catamount Software, passed away tonight after a long fight against cancer. We met just twice in person, once when we lived in Munich and he called in for an evening, and again when I drove up from Boston to the Train Station. He showed me how life would be as an independent software vendor and I had him in mind when I quit my day job to run DEVONtechnologies.

My condolences to his family. Thank you, Hardy, for having been here with us. I will miss you. Save travels.

Supporting Scottish cyclist cycling for ALD center in Aberdeen

eboehnisch — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:09:00 +0000

A few weeks ago we got contacted by Frederick Sarran from Scotland trying to raise funds for Balnagask Court in Torry, Aberdeen, a complex for Adults with Learning Disabilities (ALD) and Mental Health issues. From his website:

My name is Frederick Sarran, Support Worker and student for a Master in Autism, and I will cycle around 450 miles during 11 days in August 2013, all around Scotland (Aberdeen, Highlands, Inverness, Loch Ness, Perth, Fife, Dundee, etc…) in support of the donations for Balnagask Court Arts, Crafts and Activities. This will include some walking and camping. Please visit cycling-to-support-ald.fredsarran.com for all the info and photos on the trip.

Besides me loving Scotland and the Loch Ness area we think this is a great idea. We are supporting Frederick and, when he’s on the road, I’ll post an update or two on his progress here.

Welcome, earthling!

eboehnisch — Sat, 04 May 2013 11:46:05 +0000

Yesterday, May 3rd, 2013, at 5 p.m. CET Dominik, the third child of Christian, our head developer, safely arrived after a nine month long flight through time and space. Mother and child are well and happy. The ground staff and all of us here at DEVONtechnologies congratulate the parents and welcome the new earth citizen!

Tuesday tip: Make screenshots directly in your inbox

eboehnisch — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 08:00:26 +0000

If you make screenshots and find yourself dragging them to DEVONthink Pro or ProOffice every time, here’s a shortcut for you: You can change the Finder’s location for screenshots to any folder you like. Change this to the Inbox folder and the picture is imported immediately or at least as soon as DEVONthink Pro (Office) is being opened.

Follow this description and set the location for new screenshots to “~/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink Pro 2/Inbox/” (without the quotes). From now on new screenshots automagically appear in DEVONthink’s default destination (usually the global inbox).

Saving data donkeys in quicksand with tags

eboehnisch — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:07:27 +0000

BBC News today writes about what tags are and how they can be used to navigate notes, ideas, and other items. Technology reporter Ian Hardy also talks to our support specialist Jim Neumann.

The traditional “files and folders” way of storing our data is decades old. And while it does reward our brain with a sense of control and ease of accessibility, it’s certainly not perfect. As the file structure increases, documents several subfolders deep slowly get consumed, like a donkey in quicksand. That’s where tags come in.

Read the full article here.

Houdini hides apps you don’t use at the moment

eboehnisch — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:10:14 +0000

More than two years ago I wrote about a little menulet that I really like: Spirited Away. It automatically hides applications that you haven’t used in the last minute and so keeps your desktop decluttered. Unfortunately it’s already a bit dated. Nial Giacomelli to the rescue! He has written Houdini which also hides unused apps but, despite his company name Ugly Apps, comes with a much more elegant user interface and the ability to set the individual hiding intervals for each app. It’s free, check it out here.

Reading tip: “Go Paperless with DEVONthink Pro Office”

eboehnisch — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:45:44 +0000

Heavy-duty DEVONthink user and workflow addict Kerry Dawson wrote a nice piece on his blog dailymacview.com about going paperless with the Fujitsu ScanSnap ix500 and DEVONthink Pro Office:

Having accomplished all of this and gotten on the road to a cleaner and more organized work environment its time to pat yourself on the back for a job well done. You’ll definitely appreciate having your documents stored in DEVONthink. A cleaner workspace and knowing your documents are all stored together in a centralized database that makes retrieval far simpler than the old folder based system should be cause for both celebration and relaxation.

Read his article here.

Spring updates, part two

eboehnisch — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 03:00:32 +0000

April 11 we updated DEVONthink and DEVONnote, this week it’s time for DEVONagent, DEVONsphere Express, EasyFind, PhotoStickies and XMenu. Enjoy new automation options in DEVONagent, search FoldingText files with DEVONsphere, and share files directly from EasyFind. Read the news here.

We recommend the updates for everyone running our apps. Get the updates using the Check for Updates function inside the app or visit our Download page.

Professional education

eboehnisch — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 08:00:00 +0000

From March 4 through 6 Cocoa developers gathered in then-rainy Leicester, UK, for NSConference 5. So Alan and me joined them and enjoyed socializing with friends from the US to Israel. And while we learned about quite a few interesting ideas from other developers, from business to programming, we also acquired truly essential knowledge: how to make our own cocktails. To the right you can see Alan having fun preparing his very first Singapore Sling under the eyes of a professional bar keeper. I did a Cosmopolitan so I guess it was the unofficial “pinkish cocktail night”. Or did we just try to summon Spring?

Spring updates, part one

eboehnisch — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 10:46:23 +0000

“Alles neu macht der Mai,” Germans are saying. We do it already in April! We have just released maintenance updates for all three editions of DEVONthink as well as for DEVONnote. The update improves the reliability of synchronization, clipping with the Clip To DEVONthink browser extension as well as the bookmarklets, and many other parts of the apps. If you’re using the new web interface of DEVONthink Pro Office you’ll like that we have made it a lot faster.

We recommend the update for everyone running DEVONthink or DEVONnote version 2.x. Get the update by choosing DEVONthink > Check for Updates inside the app or visit our Download page.

CareTaker for Facebook is here!

eboehnisch — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Some people say that our apps are not “social” enough now with Facebook and Twitter being still the main trends in the industry. We listened and proudly present a brand new freeware app: CareTaker for Facebook. Never get your friends kicked out of your news feed again. Don’t get calls from annoyed friends telling you that you don’t like their posts. And all this without wasting even more time on Facebook.

Once signed in to your Facebook account CareTaker takes care of your friends and fully automatically likes their posts or comments that match the rules you set up. Create rules based on your DEVONthink databases (likes all posts that fit your interests according to your document collection) or use RegEx for even more control. Our unique Artificial Intelligence technology not only does the matching but also creates meaningful, human-looking replies for you. Finally the Toady Mode likes every of your boss’ posts and comments on them with an AI-crafted variant of “That’s great!”.

CareTaker for Facebook will be available starting today for free for Mac, iPhone, and iPad in the App Store. And make sure to like it (and us) on Facebook!

Switch from Google Reader to DEVONthink Pro

eboehnisch — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 11:08:13 +0000

Today Google announced that they would shut down their online RSS reader service Google Reader on July 1, 2013. So if you are a Google Reader subscriber looking for an alternative you may not yet know that DEVONthink Pro and Pro Office are excellent news reader, too!

Add any RSS feeds that you want to read in DEVONthink using the menu command Data > New > Feed. Feeds appear just like “living” groups with HTML files for every downloaded article. Just like in any news reader DEVONthink marks new articles as “unread”. Adjust how your feeds are updated and presented in DEVONthink Pro (Office) > Preferences > RSS. DEVONthink offers a number of different styles, converts RSS categories automatically to tags, and can remove old articles.

If you want to transfer your existing feeds from Google Reader to DEVONthink Pro (Office) you can also easily do so. Lifehacker has a great description on how to export your feeds using Google Takeout. You just have to add one more step between steps 3 and 4: “Rename ‘subscriptions.xml’ to ‘subscriptions.opml’”. That helps DEVONthink to recognize the XML file as proper OPML. Import your feeds by dragging the “subscriptions.opml” file into DEVONthink and rename the created group “subscriptions” to anything you like.

DEVONthink 2.5.1 corrects some bugs

eboehnisch — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 11:28:16 +0000

Last week we have released DEVONthink and DEVONnote 2.5 introducing our new technology that lets you keep the same database on all your Macs and always up to date. Today we have published the first minor update to version 2.5.1 with some important bug fixes for all four editions. Update your copy using the menu command Check for Updates in the app’s main menu or download a fresh one from our Download page.

DEVONthink 2.5 is here with syncing and web sharing

eboehnisch — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 14:16:06 +0000

Using multiple computers, working from different places, sharing data with coworkers: In today’s highly connected world it’s essential to always have access to the latest data. And because we know that, of course, we worked hard on creating the most versatile yet robust synchronization technology and rewriting the build-in web server of DEVONthink Pro Office.

All editions of DEVONthink 2.5 synchronize databases between multiple computers and locations either directly or via Dropbox, WebDAV, file servers, or just any mountable disk. The new web server gives your PC and Linux colleagues access to the databases you want to share with them directly through their favorite web browser. And if you’re still fighting the paper flood you will like the enhancements we have made to the scan feature.

Read the full news here or directly visit the Download page to get the new versions.

Don’t miss our screencasts that explain step-by-step how these great new feature work. 13 minutes well spent! Watch them directly from inside the app in the Support Assistant (Help > Tutorials) or here on our website on the Tips & Tutorials page.

Important: If you used previous public betas of the sync technology you need to delete your existing sync stores before using the final version. Please simply delete the sync store folder on your file server, WebDAV drive or on Dropbox. Visit the Dropbox website, navigate to the folder “Apps” and delete sync store folder there. It is named “DEVONthink” or has the name extension “.dtSyncStore”. If you haven’t excluded the sync store from synchronizing via the Dropbox app you can delete it from the Dropbox folder on your computer, too.

Bug fix update for DEVONthink To Go 1.x

eboehnisch — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 15:00:46 +0000

While we are fully engaged in re-writing DEVONthink To Go from scratch and incorporate our new sync technology we have today submitted a bug fix release version 1 to Apple. The update adds support for the iPhone 5 screen size and fixes a few crashes and sync problems. It will become available via the App Store’s update facility as soon as it has passed Apple’s review.

Screencast tip: DEVONthink for Tech Information Management

eboehnisch — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 08:00:36 +0000

Already two years online but definitely worth watching: Power user Matthew McCullough shares how he uses DEVONthink Pro Office for easily capturing information from the web for offline use and research. Matthew about his screencast:

If you are an IT worker and having a hard time keeping up with the stream of knowledge, give DevonThink a try. I use it to capture a permanent archive of all my RSS feeds, which are typically generated via “favorites” and “stars” from Google Reader, Twitter, ReadItLater and Delicious Bookmarks.

Watch his screencast on YouTube.

Der Schlupfkrabbler ist wieder in seiner Höhle

eboehnisch — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 09:28:21 +0000

Dank tatkräftiger Mithilfe von Ihnen, unseren deutschsprachigen Anwendern, haben wir den vor zwei Wochen auf unserer Webseite versteckten Hinweis auf Die Drei Fragezeichen gefunden: Auf der Seite zu DEVONsphere Server machte der Schurke aus unserem „Crawler“ sehr bildhaft übersetzt einen „Schlupfkrabbler“. Dieser ist jedoch eindeutig keine Software. Eher Hardware: Es handelt sich um einen der Mobimechs aus Folge 119, „Der geheime Schlüssel“.

Vielen herzlichen Dank für die zahlreichen Hinweise, die hierzu in den vergangenen Tagen bei Inspektor Cotta in Rocky Beach und bei uns in der Zentrale eingegangen sind. Und wie angekündigt erhalten die drei ersten Hobby-Detektive jeweils eine CD (!) der Drei Fragezeichen, einen Fujitsu ScanSnap S1100 sowie unser Infoworker’s Pro Office Bunde.

Wir gratulieren Stephan Hochhaus aus Bochum, Maic Findeisen aus Hemer und Franz-Josef Knelangen aus Heitersheim! Je eine CD mit einem Abenteuer unserer drei Freunde gehen außerdem an Markus Weigold, Jörg Gramenz und Thomas Hubschmid. Sie erhalten demnächst Post von uns!

Tuesday Tip: Add bookmarks via the Services menu

eboehnisch — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 10:11:04 +0000

Did you know that you can select clickable web addresses in e.g. Mail.app and choose “DEVONnote/DEVONthink: Take Rich Note” in the Services menu to create a bookmark in your database? Unfortunately this does not work for links in Safari. To add a bookmark for them instead of creating a rich text document drag them to DEVONnote’s or DEVONthink’s dock icon.

DEVONthink for historians

eboehnisch — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 08:00:06 +0000

Historian and power user Rachel Leow has recently published a thorough review of DEVONthink Pro Office in Perspectives on History. She explains how she uses our software for her research and where the obstacles are when trying to reach the Holy Grail, the paperless office. Rachel introduces us into this conundrum:

With the increasing ubiquity of digital archives has come the expectation that we must use them; with rapid advances in search technology has come the requirement that our research be more comprehensive than ever before. Yet, we today are a transitional generation of historians strung between physical and digital worlds. We work with a scruffy assortment of research formats: typed notes, PDFs and archive photographs alongside microfilm printouts, photocopies, and a scrawl of illegible notes from that one archive on your research trip that wouldn’t let you bring in your laptop. Consolidating this untidy sprawl has become a problem in itself, one to which scholars usually apply themselves only incidentally in the actual task of research.

Continue to read on historians.org.

Create notes in DEVONthink with Alfred

eboehnisch — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 08:00:35 +0000

If you are a user of the popular productivity application Alfred you might like this workflow created by our forum user danielsh. You can navigate your databases or create new notes with just a few keystrokes. Here’s what the author says about it:

With Alfred’s new feedback system for workflows, you can navigate through your databases and find the group you’re looking for, then enter a space and start typing your note. If it’s much in demand, I’ll add things like favorite groups. But it’s hot off the hard drive and ready for testing in its current form now if you’ve got a copy of Alfred 2.

Download it here or through AlfPT (the Unofficial Alfred Workflow Repository). The workflow requires Alfred v2 or later.

Wir wurden gehackt!

eboehnisch — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 11:30:24 +0000

Das musste ja passieren: Wir übersetzen mühselig unsere Webseite ins Deutsche und kaum sind wir fertig, bekommen wir in unserer Zentrale einen anonymen Anruf, der uns verkündet, dass man uns einen Streich gespielt habe. Irgendwo auf unseren neuen deutschsprachigen Seiten versteckt sich jetzt anscheinend ein Hinweis auf einen bekannten Fall der drei nicht ganz unbekannten, ewig jugendlichen Detektive aus Rocky Beach, Kalifornien, der drei Fragezeichen! Aber wo?

Deshalb bitten wir Sie um Ihre Mithilfe: Finden Sie den Hinweis, man uns in unsere Seiten hineingehackt hat und sagen Sie uns, was der Missetäter da versteckt hat, wo es steht, und auf welchen Fall von Justus, Peter und Bob es hinweist. Die ersten drei Einsender erhalten als Belohnung jeweils Alben der ???, einen Fujitsu ScanSnap S1100 sowie dazu passend ein Infoworker’s Pro Bundle bestehend aus DEVONthink Pro Office und DEVONagent Pro!

Sachdienliche Hinweise melden Sie bitte direkt per E-Mail an uns oder an Inspektor Cotta von der Polizeiabteilung in Rocky Beach, CA, USA.

Now Goethe could visit our website, too

eboehnisch — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 10:00:38 +0000

Our applications have always come with a user interface localized to German, our user forum has a German language board, and our sales support is happy to reply pre-sales questions in German, too. Starting today also our website is available fully localized. So if you are from Germany, Austria or Switzerland or speak German of other reasons feel free to click the new little German flag at the bottom of our website to read our solution descriptions, product pages, etc. all in German language.

Alle unsere Programme kommen seit jeher mit einer deutschsprachigen Benutzeroberfläche, wir haben ein deutschsprachiges Anwenderforum und unser Verkauf beantwortet gerne auch Anfragen in Deutsch. Ab sofort präsentiert sich auch unsere Webseite komplett lokalisiert. Wenn Sie also aus Deutschland, Österreich oder der Schweiz sind, oder aus anderen Gründen Deutsch sprechen, klicken Sie die kleine Deutschland-Fahne am unteren Rand unserer Webseite, um mehr über unsere Lösungen und Produkte in Deutsch zu erfahren.

Besuchen Sie unsere unsere deutsche Seite.

Tuesday tip: Web sharing in a popup window

eboehnisch — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 08:00:25 +0000

DEVONthink Pro Office‘s web sharing gives you sort of a simplified version of DEVONthink in a web browser. But how cool would it be if you could open a window to a DEVONthink Pro Office server like a regular app? You can — with Automator. Andy Ihnatko explains how this works on his blog.

“Grid” is now open-source

eboehnisch — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 11:06:05 +0000

Recently we had to pull the freeware application Grid from the App Store. Grid allows you to position windows using your keyboard and an on-screen grid. Unfortunately Apple’s strict sandboxing rules no longer allow third-party apps access to e.g. the Accessibility kit which Grid needs to move the windows.

Grid’s author, Rob Rix, has now made the app open-source and published it to GitHub. Feel free to download the source code and participate in its development.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

eboehnisch — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 08:00:05 +0000

All of us here at DEVONtechnologies wish you and your family Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We hope that you will enjoy a peaceful and reflective time, wherever in the world you are, whatever you believe in, and whatever culture you are part of.

Yours Eric Böhnisch-Volkmann & the DEVONtechnologies team

Our office will be closed from December 21, 2012, to January 6, 2013. Support will be available by email but we might reply slower than usual.

Last betas before Christmas: Public beta 3 of our…

eboehnisch — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 17:57:23 +0000

Last betas before Christmas: Public beta 3 of our sync technology fixes a few minor but annoying bugs and public… fb.me/1OvZwfiox

Last betas before Christmas

eboehnisch — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 17:56:40 +0000

Christmas is near but we have worked up to the last minute to provide you with the latest builds before we switch off our Macs and spend some relaxing days with our families. Public beta 3 of our sync technology fixes a few minor but annoying bugs and public beta 4 of the web sharing plugin improves the whole user experience.

How to get them? First check the system requirements. Sync need DEVONthink Pro or Pro Office 2.4.3 or higher, web sharing Pro Office 2.4.3. You can get the latest versions on our Download page.

Sharing

Sync

Then click the icons to the right to download the archives.

Important: Unzip the archives, thoroughly read the accompanying Read Me file, and follow the installation instructions laid out there. The Read Me also explains how to report found bugs.

Thank you for your great support!

Syncing and web sharing explained: If you installe…

eboehnisch — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 10:22:32 +0000

Syncing and web sharing explained: If you installed the plugins but are still unsure if you really exploit their… fb.me/2kaUsd0cr

Syncing and web sharing explained

eboehnisch — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 10:21:45 +0000

In the recent weeks we have released both DEVONthink’s new sync feature as well as a rewritten web interface for DEVONthink Pro Office as public betas via my blog. If you installed the plugins but are still unsure if you really exploit their potential check out our two new screencasts. Thirteen minutes well spent! Ray demonstrates how you can work on one database with multiple users on the local network and how you set up sync locations, e.g Dropbox, and keep your databases synchronized on all your machines.

Watch them from inside the app in the Support Assistant (Help > Tutorials) or here on our website on the Tips & Tutorials page.

Watch the videos and learn all about DEVONagent Pr…

eboehnisch — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 10:07:54 +0000

Watch the videos and learn all about DEVONagent Pro: In the Support Assistant (choose Help > Tutorials inside the… fb.me/1PeCuefxB

Watch the videos and learn all about DEVONagent Pro

eboehnisch — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 10:06:52 +0000

Now that we’ve published a large number of screencasts about DEVONthink we have caught up with DEVONagent Pro. In the Support Assistant (choose Help > Tutorials inside the application) you’ll find seven new screencasts showing you how to search effectively with DEVONagent, explaining what search sets, Boolean operators, and wildcards are, and how you can work with the found results. Finally we demonstrate how you can easily automate your research with scheduled search sets. No more excuses for not using DEVONagent for serious searching!

Alternatively check them out here on our website (on the Tips & Tutorials page switch to the DEVONagent Pro tab to watch them).

Beware of “DEVONthink” by J. Russell & R. Cohn

eboehnisch — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 12:23:23 +0000

Amazon lists a book named “DEVONthink” by some Jesse Russell and Ronald Cohn. Don’t buy it! The book consists only of a collection of mostly unrelated Wikipedia articles and has absolutely nothing to do with our software. We have notified Amazon and the book-on-demand publisher about this issue and asked for the book to be withdrawn.

BTW: When you look at the list of publications by the two “gentlemen” one can suspect that all other books are similarly unrelated to what it says on their cover.

DEVONthink sync technology — public beta 2

eboehnisch — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 20:37:21 +0000

In June we announced the first public beta of our sync technology for DEVONthink. For several months now, we’ve focused on making our sync technology reliable and easy to use regardless of your situation. Whether you have several small text-only databases or several large databases with gigabytes of PDFs, whether you use Dropbox or WebDAV or a direct connection (or all three!), whether you’re using a low-bandwidth mobile network or a corporate intranet, you should be able to rely upon Sync to safeguard your data.

WHAT’S NEW

Receipts: Sync now encodes an abbreviated representation of the database every time it transfers your data. This allows much faster syncs; minor updates to databases with tens of thousands of items will now take seconds instead of tens of minutes. It also allows Sync to determine if a previous sync failed and retry it, regardless of when the failure occurred, and degrades gracefully (the “degraded” pre-receipt comparison mechanism also performs upwards of eight times faster).

Locking: Sync uses lockfiles to protect the remote copy of a database from other clients during synchronization. These lockfiles are now maintained by a dedicated subsystem and gracefully detect and respond to tampering, misbehaving clients, network issues, and unexpected interruptions.

Transactions: Sync’s transaction-handling has been improved to ensure greater reliability. On the remote side, this means that operations are guaranteed to be performed in order. Locally, it means that cancellation is cleaner, faster, and safer than ever before.

Networking: Sync’s networking code is much more robust now; failed connections are retried automatically (and invisibly), with safeguards to protect against out-of-order operations and remote race conditions. Direct connection syncs use less memory and occur faster than ever before (don’t blink, you’ll miss it!). Dropbox operations adapt better to site outages, concurrent access from other clients, and latency when accessing Dropbox from outside the US. WebDAV connections are more forgiving of non-standard implementations and overloaded shared servers.

Security: Sync now works hand-in-hand with DEVONthink’s database-level protection system, helping to prevent unauthorized access to your data.

Interface: Sync’s user interface has been polished to integrate it better with DEVONthink. Log and error messages are clearer. Progress and preference windows have changed to incorporate user feedback.

Compatibility: Sync is now fully compatible to DEVONthink in 64-bit mode.

GET THE PUBLIC BETA AND TEST, TEST, TEST…

So, here’s the second and, in our plans, last public beta of our sync technology that allows you to synchronize databases directly between your Macs, indirectly via e.g. shared folders on a USB stick, external hard drive, or a server on your network, or via Dropbox or any WebDAV account.

How can I get it? First make sure your system meets the requirements. You’ll need an Intel-based Mac with OS X 10.6 or later and DEVONthink Pro or Pro Office 2.4.3 (click here to download the latest version).

Then click Sync Plugin 1.0 public beta 2 or right-click the link to the left and choose Download Linked File. The public beta comes as a Zip archive. If necessary double-click the downloaded file to expand it. The archive comes with a Read Me file containing the installation and usage instructions as well as a list of known issues and instructions on how to report issues and file feature requests. Please thoroughly read the Read Me file. No kidding. Enable console logging (see Read Me). And look left and right before crossing the street.

Important: If you update from the first public beta make sure to manually delete your old sync store, e.g. on Dropbox, before proceeding. For Dropbox best use the Dropbox website and look into the “Apps” folder.

What should I do? Please test this public beta with copies of your databases in any way you can: directly between Macs, using Dropbox, WebDAV, or folders on servers or external media. Write down any difficulties you encounter as well as anything you think should be changed or added. Tell us your experiences. And if it crashes, send us the crash reports. The Read Me file tells you how to do that and what is most helpful for us to know.

What’s next? The final release as part of a major update to DEVONthink.

Black Friday at DEVONtechnologies

eboehnisch — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 13:59:51 +0000

In the United States people are celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow. Families living far apart travel great distances to get together, have a bit of turkey with cranberry sauce, and take a moment to remember all of the things for which they are thankful.

We at DEVONtechnologies also have lots to be thankful for: our families, friends, and our great company lifestyle. A lifestyle that allows us to work from anywhere in the world. The kind of job that makes Mondays something to look forward to. So we want to give you, the customers that make all of this possible, something back. And no, we’re not talking about clam stuffing, honey baked ham, or homemade cranberry sauce.

Following the long-standing American tradition, we are offering you an exclusive discount of 25% on all our software products and upgrades, from Black Friday through Cyber Monday (November 23 through 26). So if you are playing with the idea of buying a license or upgrade for yourself, your spouse, kids, or friends, this is the weekend (if you’re not camped out at a Walmart somewhere).

Click here to go shopping (or buy in the App Store)

This is a world-wide offer and so starts on Nov 22, 2012, at 6 p.m. CET so that you can take advantage of it regardless if you live in New Zealand or on Hawaii. The offer will close on Tuesday, Nov 27, 2011, at 9 a.m. CET. This promotion cannot be combined with other discounts, e.g. the students & educators discount.

PS: Being one of our loyal customers here’s an opportunity for you: If you have a website and want to promote our products, you can get 25% commission on every sale you refer. Click here to sign up as one of our affiliates!

Powerful new search options in DEVONagent 3.4

eboehnisch — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 13:53:40 +0000

Just in case you didn’t know: DEVONagent Pro searches the Internet with full control and powerful options. Version 3.4 brings new options for following promising links and an exciting new way to create your own site-specific searches without writing XML plugins. And, of course, the release updates a number of pre-fab search sets, plugins, and scanners, improves the performance and fixes bugs. Read the full news here.

Tuesday tip: Use Google Docs inside of DEVONthink

eboehnisch — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 08:00:47 +0000

For bookmarks DEVONthink shows the linked web page immediately when you select it in any view that has a preview pane, e.g. in Split view. And as Google Docs is just a web page you can add it to DEVONthink just like any other bookmark. Select it and DEVONthink shows the complete Google Docs editor just like as if it was a local document.

Interesting idea

eboehnisch — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 08:00:39 +0000

Susan Young at the technologyreview.com:

DNA can be used to store information at a density about a million times greater than your hard drive, report researchers in Science today. George Church of Harvard Medical School and colleagues report that they have written an entire book in DNA, a feat that highlights the recent advances in DNA synthesis and sequencing. [more]

Today a book, tomorrow a DEVONthink database completely encoded in DNA?

New web interface for DEVONthink — public beta 3

eboehnisch — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 09:58:54 +0000

Our brand new web interface for DEVONthink Pro Office quickly approaches production status. Here’s a third public beta with more bug fixes and interface polish. Please see the first announcement to learn what is new compared to the current, old web interface.

How can I get it? First make sure your system meets the requirements. You’ll need an Intel-based Mac with OS X 10.6.8 or later and DEVONthink Pro Office 2.4.3 (click here to download the latest version).

Then click Web Sharing Public Beta 3 or right-click the link to the left and choose Download Linked File. The public beta comes as a Zip archive. If necessary double-click the downloaded file to expand it. The archive comes with a Read Me file containing the installation and usage instructions as well as a list of known issues and instructions on how to report issues and file feature requests. Please thoroughly read the Read Me file and look left and right before crossing the street.

What should I do? Please test all functions of this public beta from as many browsers and operating systems as you can. Write down any difficulties you encounter as well as anything you think should be changed or added. Tell us your experiences. The Read Me file tells you how to do that and what is most helpful for us to know.

What’s next? The final release as part of a an update to DEVONthink Pro Office.

About moderating comments

eboehnisch — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 09:41:15 +0000

In the last few week we have received two comments on the blog as well as on Facebook that didn’t only criticize our software or business behavior but also directly insulted us as persons. While we usually never moderate comments or threads in our user forum (see e.g. our business principles), I did in these cases. So please feel free to comment in this blog, write on our wall on Facebook, and discuss our software in our user forum, but please do so in a friendly and fair way. Thank you.

Get DEVONnote for just US $12.49 this weekend

eboehnisch — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 08:04:00 +0000

While we’re offering DEVONagent Express and DEVONsphere Express in our online shop as an exclusive bundle for US $4.95 (instead of $14.90) this weekend, our friends at mupromo.com give you also the opportunity to jump onto the DEVONnote/DEVONthink bandwagon. Jump over to them and get DEVONnote for only US $12.49! And of course it’s fully upgradable to DEVONthink for just the difference between the official store prices.

Hurricane Sandy: We’re completely back online

eboehnisch — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 01:21:06 +0000

As hurricane Sandy hit the US east cost the data center hosting our backend database went offline. We hope to be fully online again in a few hours. Thank you for your patience!

An update from our data center:

Due to severe and widespread damage on Long Island caused by Hurricane Sandy, our datacenter has lost all connectivity and all services are down. All three of our fiber vendors are working on the issue, however the life-threatening conditions that are expected to persist throughout the night are preventing any real repair work. We’ll do our best to restore service ASAP.

Already yesterday evening (European time) we restored our website by using an alternative server hosted on Amazon EC2 that we will use as a fallback in the future (or a replacement for the current data center).

Now our data center has restored connectivity and we are switching back.

Thank you again for your patience!

Again: Broken redirection

eboehnisch — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 14:02:00 +0000

From today’s email:

Trying to purchase Devon product but get Broken Link Page. Tried several times but not allowing me to buy. Not very good for business. Will go elsewhere!

Thank you for your patience!

PS: Only hard-coded links from external do no work yet, all internal links and the shop just work as expected.

Thanks for all the reports about the bad redirect…

eboehnisch — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 00:11:13 +0000

Thanks for all the reports about the bad redirect on our website. We are looking into the issue. Thx for the patience! 8^)

OpenMeta, better email archiving, and more

eboehnisch — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 12:41:16 +0000

DEVONthink is a long-time supporter of the OpenMeta standard for exchanging tagged files. With version 2.4.3, that we have released today, we have further improved the OpenMeta support with better handling of file system events and, in DEVONthink Pro and up, AppleScript commands for synchronizing tags between the database and files in the filesystem. If you are building your own automated workflows you can so make sure that tags are not lost when transferring data between DEVONthink and other apps.

But DEVONthink 2.4.3 brings more that just that, e.g. better, faster, and more compatible email archiving (DEVONthink Pro Office only), the ability to again open more than 25 databases at the same time, and, of course, performance optimizations and bug fixes. Check the full news here.

ScreenCastsOnline gives great intro into DEVONthink

eboehnisch — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 10:16:14 +0000

ScreenCastsOnline, famous for their great videos about all things Mac, has just published two great screencasts about DEVONthink.

DEVONthink is probably one of the most requested productivity and organisational apps I get asked to cover. Well this week is the week it happens, but as a change, I thought I’d get a DEVONthink expert in to lead us through the benefits of this complex and powerful application — Todd Olthoff.

Todd takes us through the basics of DEVONthink Pro Office for the first part of this two part series. Looking at the initial setup, exploring the user interface and examining some of the unique integration features of DEVONthink.

If you are a ScreenCastsOnline subscriber watch Part One here, and Part Two here. The screencasts are also available in this month’s (October 2012) edition of the ScreenCastsOnline Monthly iPad Magazine.

P.S. Don’t forget to check out our own screencasts which you can find inside DEVONthink (Help > Tutorials) as well as in the Support Center.

First DEVONsphere Express did local, now it does servers, too

eboehnisch — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 09:15:41 +0000

Today we have released DEVONsphere Express 1.6 with the ability to index network servers and volumes, that are not always available, too. Add your team server and get related data to whatever you’re working on in an instant from all the knowledge accumulated by your group. And if you don’t want to see irrelevant results, add the folders to the preferences and DEVONsphere Express excludes them from searching. The full power of DEVONthink, integrated into Mail, Safari, and the Finder. And now also extended to your servers.

Of course we have improved a few other things, too, and fixed some bugs. Click here to read the news or click here to download your free trial.

New introduction video for DEVONthink

eboehnisch — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 14:28:40 +0000

After having released quite a number of video tutorials for DEVONthink we have finally also re-imagined the introduction video for DEVONthink.

Meet Jim, a university student graduating in modern literature about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He collects articles, clippings, links, even paper documents, organizes them, and writes his thesis — all with DEVONthink. The built-in artificial intelligence assists him and finds connections between items that Jim even hasn’t thought of himself.

You can find the new video directly inside of DEVONthink’s Support Assistant (click here to open it or use Help > Support Assistant), then follow the link to the Welcome page) and on Vimeo (click here to watch).